Mark,
Re your comment below:
> This sounds very familiar to me, too, but I
couldn't
> find it while
> flipping through Chandler Speaking. However,
it
> occurred to me that
> Bill Pronzini said something very similar
when
> discussing writing his
> Nameless Detective and how he finally had to
give
> him a first name,
> Bill, when writing one of his
collaborations,
> Twospot, with Collin
> Wilcox, in order to avoid the problem you
mention.
> Pronzini talks about
> why his detective is Nameless in the preface
to
> Casefiles (even denying
> that he is trying to capitalize on the
Continental
> Op), but I'm pretty
> sure he discussed the problem that led to
naming
> Nameless at greater
> length somewhere else (which, I think, included
an
> example very much
> like yours -- the need for a name to address
when
> Wilcox's Lieutenant
> Hastings talked to Nameless on the
phone).
> Unfortunately, I don't
> remember where.
It's interesting that Chandler would pooh-pooh the idea of a
nameless first person narrator, since his first story written
in the first person, "Finger Man," featured a nameless
narrator.
Chandler's first PI character was a Chicago detective named
Mallory, who comes to Los Angeles for one case
(Chandler's very first story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot"),
and stays on for a second "Smart-Aleck Kill."
These were written in the third person.
He then decided to develop a new first-person character,
similar to Mallory, but who operated out of LA rather than
Chicago. In the first story, as I said, he wasn't named. A
few stories later, he was referred to as "Carmady." When
Chandler moved from BLACK MASK to DIME DETECTIVE, he took the
character with him, but changed his name to John Dalmas. Whe
he graduated to novels, of course, Carmady/Dalmas became
Philip Marlowe.
Two of the Carmady stories, "Finger Man" and
"Goldfish," and two of the Dalmas stories, "Red Wind" and
"Trouble Is My Business," were reprinted in THE SIMPLE ART OF
MURDER with the names changed to "Philip Marlowe" (or in the
case of "Finger Man," the name
"Philip Marlowe" inserted). All of the other Carmady/Dalmas
stories were combined and expanded into Marlowe novels.
Because of an experience I had, I've often wondered whether
Carmady's going unnamed in "Finger Man" might have been
inadvertent. In the first story I wrote about a character
named Dan Sullivan, I fully intended to refer to the
character by name, but when I was reading over what I
regarded as my final draft, I realized that Dan, who narrates
the story, never refers to himself by name. And I tried to
include, all attempts just seemed like obviously shoe-horning
the information in, so I just sent it out, and have been very
careful to make sure Dan gets referred to by name in all
subsequent stories.
In other words, it's a lot easier to forget to mention the
name of a first person narrator than people realize.
JIM DOHERTY
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